Matrix Games and Western Civilization Software (www.west-civ.com) are pleased to announce the release of the comprehensive 1.12.2 update for their acclaimed Civil War strategy game, Forge of Freedom! The update comes with a sizeable amount of fixes, rule changes, improvements, and new features and further polishes the gameplay of Forge of Freedom based on player feedback and ongoing game reports.

Specifically for fixes, VPs are now properly assigned only for decisive battles and the National Will bug for capturing empty cities is now fixed. There are also many other improvements and tweaks with detailed battles, especially with the AI and with reinforcements now adding to the Will to Fight. In addition, the US will now lose one additional National Will point if it loses a decisive battle in a US province and the CSA will gain one NW point in the same situation. New features include 10 new special abilities for units, improvements to generals’ statistics, new generals’ biographies (now 300 in total), and much more.

David Heath, Director of Operations at Matrix Games, said “Forge of Freedom has proven to be an enduring classic in the American Civil War strategy genre. Anyone looking for an authentic wargame that truly captures the rich strategic and tactical problems facing a commander of that time period should absolutely give Forge of Freedom a try. Western Civilization Software has polished this gem to a mirror finish with their excellent post-release updates.”

More than seven-score years have passed since the start of this conflict that pitted state against state, brother against brother and broke the chains of slavery. Forge of Freedom gives you a chance to relive history from either side in a work of grand strategy.

As the leader of the Union or the Confederacy, you will be faced with historical decisions on the military, economic and diplomatic strategies to pursue. The diplomatic and economic systems have been streamlined and improved since Crown of Glory to be more user-friendly and also suited to the period. Rather than multiple minor nations, each state has its own Governor and they will make demands on you and shift their attitudes according to events. In addition, you will have to manage diplomacy with the European powers to try to sway them towards or against intervention. Over 1,000 historical generals are included along with an option to know their abilities ahead of time or have to find out the hard way, as happened historically. Railroads, rivers and cities all play important roles, as do elections which occur at both state and national levels. Every effort has been made to bring you as thorough a simulation of the American Civil War as is possible, from 1861 to 1865, from the skirmishes and raids in the West to the pitched in the East and the Naval blockade.

Get the update here. This update is comprehensive and will bring any previous version of Forge of Freedom to version 1.12.2.

During the next few weeks, we will aim to show how you manage a country in Field of Glory: Empires. So let’s get stuck in!

The map of FoG Empires is divided into Regions. Although as your realm grows you will be able to organise these into Provinces, Regions are where the game “happens” – your armies move from Region to Region, and your population, buildings, and trade are all linked to individual Regions

On January 14th, 1944, Leningrad Front and Volkhov Front launched a combined offensive against the German 18th Army still standing at the outskirts of Leningrad. The plan was to break through to Luga from north and East and encircle the army, before continuing the attack to the Panther Line still under construction and break into the Baltic.

The Germans had in the previous months severely weakened the army by transferring many divisions south and was planning a withdrawal to shorten the front line. The offensive started before they could implement this plan 'Blau'.

With the release of World at War, the Strategic Command franchise has expanded greatly the amount of content that was at disposal in War in Europe. And, surely, one thing that has received enormous attention by the community is the Modding activity.

We have decided to give a highlight on four Mods that grabbed our attention, and we are very happy to see the community getting bigger and bigger!